The only way to end the war on drugs and the criminal controls therein is to legalize drugs. That simple act puts the power of control and price into the hands of the government and takes it out of the hands of criminals.

It worked on Alcohol in America after the failed prohibition policies... and it would work now for drugs. Let the government control the amount of active ingredient, the production requirements and the price at which it sells. Let the budget get the benefits of increased tax revenue through licencing and excise. Let the tax revenue provide for the voluntary drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs for those with addiction issues - it's cheaper than waging a drug war and incarceration. Let the people choose their poison as once they could.

Drugs have been an cultural inclusion within all societies since pre history times. We are not going to stop seeking them. Allow some social drugs (alcohol) to be deemed acceptable and others not is moral hypocrisy.

True Blue

Posts : 158Join date : 2011-11-18Location : The most liveable city in the World

True Blue wrote:Drugs have been an cultural inclusion within all societies since pre history times.

You may take this f9rst part literally or allegorically; either way, the lesson is the same.

Cain murdered Able (I think that’s the right order) near the beginning of human existence, and murder has been a cultural inclusion within society since; therefore, murder should be legalized.

My point is that pretty much everything that’s illegal today has been a cultural inclusion in human society as far back as we know. If we were to legalize things based upon cultural inclusion, then everything would be legalized. Of necessity, there must be some other criterion used to differentiate between what ought to be legalized and what ought to remain illegal.

Dugs that have been deemed illegal have been so deemed because of their detrimental effects on individuals, families, and societies. That’s “not broke”, so “don’t fix it.”

In my opinion, correct punishment is the key. A person is convicted of possession of a controlled substance, crack. Is that person guilty? Yes. He was caught with enough crack in his direct possession to light up Paris. Was he dealing? No. Homey kept it all to himself, and kissed the sky while dodging the ISS. So what should be his punishment?

It shouldn’t be hard time in Soledad. There are enough violent criminals to overpopulate every Soledad in America USV. Placing the sky soldier in with the gangsters does naught but express the punitiveness (ought to be a word) of society. It makes us feel good; we’re hard on crime. Meanwhile, during incarceration with the real criminals, the junkie learns to be a real criminal.

To state the obvious, drugs legalisation is a political decision for Politicians to make. It is in a similar category to euthanasia, inasmuch as no elected Politician will touch it with a bargepole.

A strong campaign for either proposal would have to slowly change public opinion over a period of probably five-to-eight years. Longer than the Parliamentary Term and therefore out of the question for any professional politico.

Should drugs be legal? It might be worth considering. At a stroke, gone would be the drug barons, the shootings and every other crime involved with illegal drugs. The current expenditure on fighting drugs (mainly a losing battle) could be ploughed into helping the addicts and on education. If drugs were legal, they could be taxed just like tobacco and alcohol.

It’s clear that the prohibition of any substance which is in demand does not work. From 1920 until 1933, the Americans banned the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol. What was the result? It stimulated the proliferation of underground, organised and widespread criminal activity. The law was widely flouted; by 1925 in New York alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 ‘speakeasy’ clubs.

Most of us have read reports of how, after a heavy intake of cannabis as a teenager, someone has developed schizophrenia. Cannabis has been associated with mental disorders in many studies, but these studies come to different conclusions. They disagree on whether cannabis causes the mental problems, whether the mental problems encourage cannabis use, or whether cannabis use and mental problems are the effects of a third cause. And cannabis was ranked as one of the least harmful drugs by a study published in the UK medical journal, ‘The Lancet’, in 2007.

Apparently, cannabis used medically does have some beneficial effects. These include pain relief, the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation in chemotherapy and AIDS patients. Something in cannabis may even help patients with multiple sclerosis. Two USA governors, in Washington state and Rhode Island, have just asked the federal government to reclassify it so that it can be used medically. Canada, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria have already legalised cannabis for medicinal use.

One argument against legalising cannabis is that it’s seen as a “gateway drug” to harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin, but. Given the ease of acquiring drugs today, it's unlikely that legalisation would produce more addicts. Those who have addictive personalities are likely to become users regardless of the legal status of drugs.

Most drug offenders are non-violent, which is something you can’t say about many of those who abuse alcohol. Here again, alcohol consumed in moderation is thought to explain the ‘French paradox'. The French diet is considered to be very high in fat, especially saturated fat, yet their death rate from coronary heart disease (CHD) remains relatively low. A research study published in 1992 suggested that the low death rates from CHD could be due to the relatively high consumption of wine in France. Red wine in particular also contains flavonoids that act as antioxidants, which help to reduce the build up of atherosclerosis (when fat builds up on the inner walls of arteries). Red wine seems to help maintain the flexibility of the blood vessel walls.

However, in the UK there has been a huge increase in the number of young adults treated in hospital for serious liver problems brought on by drinking too much. The biggest increase in hospital admissions for alcohol-related liver disease has been seen in 25 to 29-year-olds. Dr Chris Record, a liver specialist at Newcastle University, has said alcoholic liver disease used to be rare in young adults but had increased as drinking habits had changed, and was likely to worsen.

Heroin will relieve pain and cocaine might enhance your sex life, but smoking tobacco kills over 100,000 people every year in the UK and doesn’t have any medical benefits. Yet it’s legal. Isn’t there a case for saying that tobacco, alcohol and drugs should all either be legal or illegal? And judging by the failure of the past prohibition of alcohol in the USA, the ever-losing battle fought by drug enforcement agencies, and the need to let people make their own choices in our so-called free countries, shouldn’t they all be legal?

Well, guns are legal in the US, too, and yet there is still a healthy black market in gun running. I once lived in a very rural area where little hunting cabins existed in profusion. There were more seasonal residences than there were residents. It seemed every single day, someone was reporting stolen guns pilfered from their hunting cabins. In just this area alone, guns were being stolen by the hundreds each year. Legalizing drugs will not destroy the drug cartels, the barons, or the small-time dealer. The government will undoubtedly place all kinds of restrictions and regulations on recreational drug use which will discourage many users from using "government drugs" - it will be too weak, too expensive, and most importantly, people will know about it, especially their employers!

And you can bet that employers are going to check. Legal or not, most employers will NOT want to hire an addict - or keep an addict currently employed. Many will still opt for the corner dealer and those nefarious back alley deals that no one will ever see or hear about. Those adults with families might also deem to keep drug use a secret if for no other reason than financial - drug use will ruin a person financially even if the government sells it cheap. Addicts will simply buy more of it. Some idiot once accused me of using heroin because a heroin spoon was found in "my" sink - I say "my" because I shared the apartment with one other roommate, and he decided to turn it into an impromptu halfway house for friends just getting out of jail. That spoon could have belonged to a hundred different people. At any rate, no one believed I was using heroin for one major reason: I had too much "stuff." Most addicts end up selling off most of their possessions in order to keep using.

Let's also remember that legalizing alcohol did not end the gangsters or organized crime. They simply switched to gambling, prostitution, extortion, and the ever-present gun-smuggling. If all drugs are legalized, I doubt the drug lords and their respective cartels will simply say, "Aww shucks," and go home. All of the petty dealers who drive around in tricked-out cars and wearing Armani suits will not suddenly go looking for an honest day's pay. The criminal element will still be criminals, and the subsequent "turf wars" that would erupt over control of other illicit activities would result in a bloodbath.

The only good thing to come of it will be all of those job openings as people get fired for their addictions. Those who do not do drugs will have the pick of the litter as far as jobs are concerned.

legalizing drugs would take the money out of the cartels hands, why not put the money that the failed drug policy has been spending on something that is not working and put it into rehabs for those that need it. I get tired of the anolgy of employers do not want to hire addicts. Does anyone realize that I can smoke on the weekend on my own time and then fail a drug test a week later or up to 30 days and yet I was not using at work. Alcohol is one of the most abused drug ever and you drink up a storm and in 24 hours it is not in your system and you pass a piss test. All this money spent on the War in Drugs and still the drugs flow. And the drug most likely to be a gate way drug is alcohol and that is legal.

For those seeking to deny freedom because the worst will happen... you say this without regard for Spain's Policy on drugs. They don't seek to prosecute or punish anymore... directing the savings into rehab which is a voluntary process and proving quite successful.

True Blue

Posts : 158Join date : 2011-11-18Location : The most liveable city in the World

Shirina wrote:-Well, guns are legal in the US, too, and yet there is still a healthy black market in gun running……Legal or not, most employers will NOT want to hire an addict - or keep an addict currently employed…..Let's also remember that legalizing alcohol did not end the gangsters or organized crime. They simply switched to gambling, prostitution, extortion, and the ever-present gun-smuggling……The criminal element will still be criminals, and the subsequent "turf wars" that would erupt over control of other illicit activities would result in a bloodbath.

Please note that I said that legalising drugs “might be worth considering”, I’m not 100% sold on the idea. However, I find the above response rather defeatist.

I’m not familiar with American gun laws, but as the country is famous for its permits culture, can I assume that the ownership of legally-held guns can be traced, and therefore there is a black market for guns to be used for crime? I don’t see how that’s analogous to legalising drugs.

Not all drug users are addicts, and those who are, and are employed, probably don’t hide it very well. As drugs are relatively easy to obtain now (so I’m told!), I wouldn’t expect a significant increase in the number of addicts if drugs were legalised.

There is another aspect to this. When something becomes legal (such as homosexuality) or illegal (such as racism), we do see a shift in public opinion as to what is and is not acceptable. An employer who sacked someone for taking drugs when they're legal might soon become a pariah.

By definition, there will always be crime (i.e. law breaking) as long as there are laws. As to criminals switching to other activities, there is evidence that many women turn to prostitution to get money to feed their drug habit, so perhaps prostitution should be legalised and regularised as well. In a free society, isn’t it up to a woman if she wishes to sell her ‘favours’? Isn’t it only religion that has made prostitution illegal in the first place?

I’m not familiar with American gun laws, but as the country is famous for its permits culture, can I assume that the ownership of legally-held guns can be traced, and therefore there is a black market for guns to be used for crime? I don’t see how that’s analogous to legalising drugs.

There is a black market for guns catering to anyone who wishes, for whatever reason, to bypass government regulations. A right-wing gun nut convinced that the government is going to start kicking down doors and confiscating weapons may prefer to buy a gun illegally so the government will not know about him having one. Not all black market sales are made so a person can use the weapon in a criminal act. However, what a person uses a gun - or drugs - for isn't relevant. My point centered around the fact that legalizing drugs will not put the illegal sellers out of business, and history has born that out. Legalizing alcohol did not put the gangsters out of business and the 2nd Amendment has not put gun-runners out of business.

Not all drug users are addicts, and those who are, and are employed, probably don’t hide it very well. As drugs are relatively easy to obtain now (so I’m told!), I wouldn’t expect a significant increase in the number of addicts if drugs were legalised.

On good days, I always take the dosage the doctor prescribed. On bad days, I take more. It takes more to cut through the pain. Fortunately, my doctor said that was a good thing and I wasn't killing myself doing it. However, with illicit drugs, I imagine the same concept will hold true. As long as life is relatively good, people can control their usage. If things turn sour, how easy it will be to simply reach for the bong, the needle, or the tube instead of taking proactive steps to solve the problem. Returning to normal levels of usage even if life improves will probably not happen. Thus an addict is born. Drugs are only easy to get if you affiliate with people who sell them. A person like me, for instance, wouldn't have the slightest clue how to obtain them.

There is another aspect to this. When something becomes legal (such as homosexuality) or illegal (such as racism), we do see a shift in public opinion as to what is and is not acceptable. An employer who sacked someone for taking drugs when they're legal might soon become a pariah.

Employers don't want drug-users working for them because they pose a clear and present danger to other workers, not because they are worried about morality and social acceptance. Drugs, like alcohol, alters the mind and can lower productivity as well as cause serious lapses in judgment by the workforce. The effects of drugs on a person are often far more subtle than someone who is drunk, and the stink of alcohol is nearly impossible to hide. It also takes large quantities of alcohol for a regular drinker to get drunk, far too much to bring to work with them. Drugs, on the other hand, are easy to hide and often easy to administer. A quick injection, a snort, a pill in the break room or toilet stall when no one is looking. The risk is simply too great - and I'm sure MANY people have often dreamed of being able to take some form of drug to get through the day.

In a free society, isn’t it up to a woman if she wishes to sell her ‘favours’? Isn’t it only religion that has made prostitution illegal in the first place?

Prostitution is a different matter, and the difference lies primarily with the fact that it poses no danger to anyone else aside from a John bringing home a STD and giving it to his spouse. Prostitution is definitely a morality crime born of religion and I would have no problems if it were legalized tomorrow.

I also have no real problems if, say, marijuana were legalized, but I simply don't trust a society with open drug use. I would always have to wonder - did the pilot flying my plane or the guy driving my taxi just snort a big line of coke before climbing into the plane or car? Sure, it could happen even now, but why make it both easier and acceptable for it to happen?

Every time there is a change of Administration, the New Boys bubble over with excitement at the changes they can make. Then the Civil Servants explain why things are as they are, and why change is therefore going to be difficult.

That's why things tend to continue as they always have been, and it's useful to have something to blame.

Ivan wrote:Should drugs be legal? It might be worth considering. At a stroke, gone would be the drug barons, the shootings and every other crime involved with illegal drugs. The current expenditure on fighting drugs (mainly a losing battle) could be ploughed into helping the addicts and on education. If drugs were legal, they could be taxed just like tobacco and alcohol.

It’s clear that the prohibition of any substance which is in demand does not work. From 1920 until 1933, the Americans banned the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol. What was the result? It stimulated the proliferation of underground, organised and widespread criminal activity. The law was widely flouted; by 1925 in New York alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 ‘speakeasy’ clubs.

Most of us have read reports of how, after a heavy intake of cannabis as a teenager, someone has developed schizophrenia. Cannabis has been associated with mental disorders in many studies, but these studies come to different conclusions. They disagree on whether cannabis causes the mental problems, whether the mental problems encourage cannabis use, or whether cannabis use and mental problems are the effects of a third cause. And cannabis was ranked as one of the least harmful drugs by a study published in the UK medical journal, ‘The Lancet’, in 2007.

Apparently, cannabis used medically does have some beneficial effects. These include pain relief, the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation in chemotherapy and AIDS patients. Something in cannabis may even help patients with multiple sclerosis. Two USA governors, in Washington state and Rhode Island, have just asked the federal government to reclassify it so that it can be used medically. Canada, Spain, the Netherlands and Austria have already legalised cannabis for medicinal use.

One argument against legalising cannabis is that it’s seen as a “gateway drug” to harder drugs such as cocaine and heroin, but. Given the ease of acquiring drugs today, it's unlikely that legalisation would produce more addicts. Those who have addictive personalities are likely to become users regardless of the legal status of drugs.

Most drug offenders are non-violent, which is something you can’t say about many of those who abuse alcohol. Here again, alcohol consumed in moderation is thought to explain the ‘French paradox'. The French diet is considered to be very high in fat, especially saturated fat, yet their death rate from coronary heart disease (CHD) remains relatively low. A research study published in 1992 suggested that the low death rates from CHD could be due to the relatively high consumption of wine in France. Red wine in particular also contains flavonoids that act as antioxidants, which help to reduce the build up of atherosclerosis (when fat builds up on the inner walls of arteries). Red wine seems to help maintain the flexibility of the blood vessel walls.

However, in the UK there has been a huge increase in the number of young adults treated in hospital for serious liver problems brought on by drinking too much. The biggest increase in hospital admissions for alcohol-related liver disease has been seen in 25 to 29-year-olds. Dr Chris Record, a liver specialist at Newcastle University, has said alcoholic liver disease used to be rare in young adults but had increased as drinking habits had changed, and was likely to worsen.

Heroin will relieve pain and cocaine might enhance your sex life, but smoking tobacco kills over 100,000 people every year in the UK and doesn’t have any medical benefits. Yet it’s legal. Isn’t there a case for saying that tobacco, alcohol and drugs should all either be legal or illegal? And judging by the failure of the past prohibition of alcohol in the USA, the ever-losing battle fought by drug enforcement agencies, and the need to let people make their own choices in our so-called free countries, shouldn’t they all be legal?

Ivan wrote:It’s clear that the prohibition of any substance which is in demand does not work. From 1920 until 1933, the Americans banned the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol. What was the result? It stimulated the proliferation of underground, organised and widespread criminal activity. The law was widely flouted; by 1925 in New York alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 ‘speakeasy’ clubs.

In our lifetimes, the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels could not exist without overwhelming demand in the US, because where there is demand for product, Keynesian economics predicts that somebody will supply product in order to reap the profit.

I disagree with your conclusion as to the better solution (the jury's still "out" on the Netherlands' experiment), but your exposition of the problem is right on target.

Ivan wrote:Most drug offenders are non-violent

Not true in my neck of the woods. Crackheads will lie, con, scam, break in and steal, and commit armed robbery to get their drug.

Guns were made illegal and the only ones to suffer were the honest peoplethe gangsters still have their guns and use them and there is no way in which this can be changed.

It matters not one iota wether drugs are legal or illegal those intent on using them will always do so, the only consideration should be, is it the resposibility of society to pay for the results of their actions or should they be left to their own devices ?.

The USA prohibited the sale of alcohol in the 1920s, giving life to the notorious Gangs of Chicago and elsewhere with their speakeasy illegal bars. Then along came the Wall Street Crash followed by Depression. Suddenly Government realised the amount of Taxes potentially available from alcohol duty, and repealed Prohibition.

Sometime soon, the World's politicians will swallow their scruples and balance the books from Drugs money.

Drugs remain 'illegal' for a hidden reason. As it happens, all drugs are 'lawful', but what's lawful and what's legal are two very different things. Unfortunately, few people apart from the ones in the highest echelons of human commerce understand this. Something is 'legal' is just 'licenced' by Statute. This has nothing to do with common law, which is the law of the land. The only law of the land is that we don't cause harm, injury or loss to another human being or commit fraud in our contracts. If one knows how to stand outside the 'juridiction' of Statutes (acts of Parliament), one can use what drugs one likes without being penalised.

It's useful to our corrupt governments to keep drugs illegal. When money is spent on drugs it effectively goes out of circulation and away from taxation. That may sound bad, but governments can then import huge quantities of heroin (one of the reasons we have so much military in Afghanistan) and cocaine to control the people and the money supply. When the money supply shrinks, more is printed which is inflationary, and peoples' savings lose value.

If you don't understand what I've just said, please educate yourselves. There are lots of resources on the internet. But it does take some time and effort to de-condition oneself. The truth about Law, Commerce. Money, Banking and Government is utterly horrific, but remedy is available to those who take the trouble to look for it, but it is like trying to put together a jigsaw with no picture of what it should look like. After a while the picture will take shape and the penny will drop.

Depends on what drugs you're talking about, who will be taking them, supplying them, controlling them and if they will be safe. Alcohol and cigarettes cost the NHS millions of pound every year yet the government deems these as acceptable even though they are addictive and toxic killers. The tax revenue generated from these two drugs is acceptable but other recreational drugs are not. Does not seem sensible or reasonable to me.

Several decades ago, I witnessed a marijuana street level dealer preparing nickel and dime bags for sale. He dumped his stash out unto one side of his dining room table and dumped a bunch of dried whole oregano on the other side. Using a common twelve inch ruler, he roughly measured off and combined one part marijuana with three parts of oregano and thoroughly mixed the two together in a third pile at the center of the table. From this third pile he filled the nickel and dime bags.

I wonder what degree of meth’s effects stem from the meth, and what degree stem from the junk with which dealers cut meth?

I'm inclined to agree - granted, most drugs have some negative health impact (like saturated fats, tobacco, alcohol, lack of exercise, poor posture etc etc) but in fact the real 'evil' of drugs surely rests in the methods of supply and distribution, which involve criminal and violent behaviours that create a big problem for world governments and incidentally provide a really good funding stream for various forms of global terrorism.

Taking the law breaking out of the equation may not have massive public health benefits, but would certainly at a stroke put lots of criminal gangs out of business - the money saved on policing and raised through taxation could arguably be invested in better and more easily accessible rehab facilities, which might well have a beneficial public health impact.

Although I would baulk at calling prostitution a 'service' (to my mind it's a form of exploitation and should not be countenanced in a civilised society) as there are prostitutes out there, I would agree the practice should be legalised, taxed and appropriate measures in place to ensure prostitutes are safe in the workplace and get proper health care etc.

In 1893 a report by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission had concluded that “the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all”. It recommended, for India, “restraining use and improving the revenue by the imposition of suitable taxation” at “as high a rate of duty as can be levied without inducing illicit practices” on the grounds that “the best way to restrict the consumption of drugs is to tax them”. Taxation of drugs had already been used for some time in parts of India.

Cannabis (originally known as hemp) first became illegal in the UK in 1928, when the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1925 came into force. There were no British domestic reasons, no lobbying for or against prohibition, and no parliamentary debates. The Act had been passed after Britain signed the 1925 Geneva International Convention on Narcotics Control, organised by the League of Nations.

Cannabis was added to the agenda of the 1925 Convention on Narcotics Control because Egypt and Turkey proposed it. The Egyptian delegate denounced 'Hashism', which he claimed caused up to 60% of the insanity in his country.